President Donald Trump’s Justice Department is applying legal pressure to try to end minority teacher programs in Minneapolis.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has faced backlash —including mass defections at her agency and rebukes from hundreds of former officials — for perverting the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division into a tool that’s being used to dismantle civil rights, enable segregation and pursue bogus claims that diversity programs constitute anti-white discrimination.
We got a prime example of this last week, when the DOJ announced a federal lawsuit against Minneapolis Public Schools over baseless allegations that teacher diversity initiatives amount to racist discrimination.
Basically, in response to data showing that nonwhite teachers were disproportionately affected during mass layoffs — which in Minneapolis are supposed to be based on seniority — the school system reached an agreement with the local teachers union in 2022 to create protections that shield some members from such layoffs if they are “a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers.”
As the Minnesota Reformer explained at the time:
The policy doesn’t mention race, which better positions the district and union, experts say. The language could apply to Latino teachers, as well as LGBTQ, low-income and multilingual teachers.
In other words, the policy was created to curb discrimination, and it was deliberately written to avoid legal challenges.
Nonetheless, the DOJ’s lawsuit contends the policy is discriminatory by relying largely on other statements the school system has made about its reported goals of increasing the number of Black, Indigenous and other people of color on staff. The Justice Department also accuses the school system of discrimination over an effort to increase its number of Black male teachers. The crisis of Black men leaving the teaching profession has been in focus nationally for several years now.
Minneapolis Public Schools declined MS NOW’s request for comment, saying the school system does not comment on pending litigation.
But the truth is there’s ample evidence showing that teacher diversity stands to improve student outcomes for all students. When you pair that with evidence showing a relative dearth of nonwhite teachers nationwide along with evidence of the particular benefits that nonwhite teachers have been known to provide nonwhite students, minority teacher programs seem like lifelines for public education, rather than handouts to the undeserving or unqualified.
But the Trump administration — led by a man who regularly spews bigoted bile — is pursuing its anti-diversity crusade nonetheless.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.